Court won't revisit child rape execution case
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court rejected on Wednesday a request by Louisiana and the Bush administration to revisit its recent ruling that outlawed the death penalty for those convicted of raping a child.
The state and the Justice Department had asked the nation's high court to take the rare step of reconsidering its decision because they neglected to tell the court that Congress in 2006 had made child rape a capital offense under U.S. military law.
By a 7-2 vote, the court refused to revisit its decision issued at the end of June. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, his Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama and other politicians all said they disagreed with the ruling.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said for the court majority that the Constitution barred a state from imposing the death penalty for the rape of a child when the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in the victim's death.
He said a national consensus exists against capital punishment for the crime of child rape and that the death penalty, based on current evolving standards, should be reserved for the worst crimes that take the victim's life.
Only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito sided with the state and the administration and would have heard the case again.
The court amended its opinion by adding a footnote to take into account that U.S. military law allows capital punishment for the crime of child rape.
"We find that the military penalty does not affect our reasoning or conclusions," the court said in the footnote.
Justice Kennedy said in a statement joined by the court's four liberal justices that rehearing the case simply was not warranted.
"Authorization of the death penalty in the military sphere does not indicate that the penalty is constitutional in the civilian context," he wrote.
The military's use of the death penalty for child rape "does not draw into question our conclusions that there is a consensus against the death penalty for the crime in the civilian context and that the penalty here is unconstitutional," Kennedy said.
The Supreme Court had previously ruled on the death penalty and rape in 1977, when it outlawed executions in a case in which the victim was an adult woman. It said then that the death penalty was an excessive penalty for a rapist who does not take a human life.
The ruling in June struck down laws in Louisiana and five other states. It affected only two men who were on death row in Louisiana for the rape of a child.
(Editing by Philip Barbara)
